Hello,

It looks like the camshaft may have been installed wrong on my truck. Does anybody know if this would cause the valves to bend? 94 5.9L

Thanks,
Brandon

 

Yes, it is.

 

Depends how "wrong"

When I was a kid I changed a cam in a 1st gen dodge with a 318. When I put the new chain on, I used a reference mark on the gear for machining/manufacturing instead of the proper dot on the lower gear for the cam timing. The truck started and ran but sounded REALLY strange, almost like a deisel. Initially I thought the lifters hadn't pumped up so I took it for a short drive and it started to heat and I took it home, broke it down, fixed my mistake and it ran fine after that. If I remember correctly I was off probably 10 teeth, which is alot. I never bent any valves, but my saving grace was that I didn't have a long duration high lift cam (it was a MP purple shaft 260/268 .430/.450 lift), and the pistons on 318's are way down in the hole. 360's only have about .390/.410 lift and really small duration and the pistons are fairly far down in the hole as well, so, you might be okay.

Do you have any more info? ie does the truck still run, is it locked up, are the pushrods bent, etc

 

If the timing events between the valves and piston are not in sync the intake valve can open too early on the up stroke of the piston, or the exhaust valve close too late on the exhaust stroke. When the piston kisses a valve, something's gonna break. Bent pushrods and valves are the cheap fixes. Pistons with holes and rods thru blocks are not.

 

If the cam lift is too large for your application, it could cause the valves to hit the pistons and bend the valve stems (among other things). If it was installed improperly (out of time) it could also cause the valves to hit the pistons.

 

Thanks guys, I messed the timing up when I put the chain back together, there was some dirton the camshaft gear which I thought was the mark, but it was another thing.

Well, pulling the heads this weekend and changing all the valves. Also looks like an alternator now, snapped one of the studs off .

And a starter (starter was freewheeling, thought it wasn't engaging the clutch, replaced it, come to find out no compression on all 8 cylinders), plus the timing chain. Talk about bad luck/stupidity. On another note, I am getting a Chilton's book, alldata seems to be very screwy on this stuff.

 

ive noticed with alldata sometimes they leave out important info.

 

i'm not following the story here - what the hell happened ?

did you replace the cam ?
or just the timing chain ?

the cam and crank are slotted for keys, and there's only two? ways it can go on, right? the right way and one wrong way, where the crank dot is up but the cam dot is also up (instead of down) ?

fess up. what happened ?


have you put everything right and rechecked for compression ? i can't believe all eight cylinders have zero compression. that doesn't seem right.

 

sure it is if the chain broke while engine was running it would hit all intake valves and bend them open...

 

The crank gear can have multiple keyways in it. The one I had had 3, one for straight up and the other 2 for 4 degrees advanced and 4 degrees retarded. But that's not the issue in this case, the OP lined up the dots using the wrong dot. In my case, the dot I used was, I'm guessing, used for a reference mark for manufacturing, so the chain I used had 2 seperate sets of dots, with only one set being the proper ones for cam timing. BTW the chain I used was the Mopar Performance one, so it's something to watch out for